U.S. Asks Curbs on Giving Secret Data to Noriega

Federal prosecutors asked the judge in the Manuel A. Noriega case Tuesday to impose strict procedures for releasing sensitive documents about the deposed Panamanian leader’s past involvement with the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In a new court filing, government lawyers said many records classified “Top Secret” will be sought by defense attorneys and “could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the national security of the United States” if made public.

Although the prosecutors did not specify how the files could harm U.S. national security, their legal brief sounded the most ominous note to date in view of Noriega’s expected defense that his alleged drug trafficking was condoned by U.S. intelligence agents for more than a decade.

Previously, Bush Administration officials had said that they had nothing to fear from any disclosures that Noriega might make.

But the court filing signed by Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael P. Sullivan said at one point that “the unauthorized disclosure and uncontrolled dissemination of such information would cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.”

Sullivan said he was referring to documents that might be provided not only to Noriega’s defense team but also to lawyers representing several co-defendants in the case.

He complained, for example, that the attorney representing former Noriega pilot Daniel Miranda had filed legal papers “seeking to disclose certain information” about the reputed ability of the U.S. National Security Agency to intercept telephone conversations and other communications in Panama.

The attorney, Michael O’Kane, once a U.S.-appointed lawyer with the Panama Canal Commission, responded that a supposedly secret National Security Agency facility was public knowledge, being identified on a city map printed in the Panama City telephone book.

U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler, who will preside at Noriega’s trial, took the government’s request under advisement. Hoeveler so far has established no firm procedures for handling classified information.

However, Sullivan said that Hoeveler should promptly issue a “protective order” setting up such procedures.

“In anticipation of additional requests (besides O’Kane’s) for disclosure of classified information, the government is conducting a search of the files of the Central Intelligence Agency and other government agencies,” Sullivan said.

Although Sullivan did not mention former White House aide Oliver L. North by name, his legal brief asked Hoeveler to promulgate rules under the Classified Information Procedures Act similar to those established last year by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell, who presided over North’s conviction on three of 12 felony charges in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Gesell had directed that all secret files in the North case be kept in a heavily guarded government repository where defense attorneys could examine the records to determine which ones were relevant to the case.

In a related drug-trafficking case, an attorney for Lt. Col. Luis A. del Cid charged Tuesday that the former officer in Noriega’s Panama Defense Forces is being “caged in a tiny cell” most often used to punish difficult prisoners.

Del Cid is expected to be pressured by federal prosecutors to become a government witness against Noriega.